Tag: rockstar

So here’s the thing about this blog of mine. I consider it work. I’m ok with that, I really am. Some people would love to go on and on about the beauty of the written word and how blogs let people express themselves in new ways and how print is dead and la la la, but none of that is true. The bottom line is, blogs are as silly as Facebook and anyone who regularly blogs is just as obsessed with the little icon telling you that you have a new follower or someone left you a comment or you’ve gotten “x” amount of views today. Its all vanity. Call it what it is. Embrace it. Don’t make yourself look silly by saying you are pouring your thoughts out and you aren’t concerned with your views or likes or whatever. If that were the case, you would be writing your thoughts in a tattered journal like the rest of us.

I’m not sure why I switched modes and started scolding the fictitious blogger, but it happened and I’m ok with it. You know why I’m ok with it? Because this is a blog and it’s not real.

Speaking of things that aren’t real.

Have you read The Velveteen Rabbit lately? You should. It’s a doozy. So many layers! Like onions, or ogres.

As this blog is not real, and as this blog is work, and as the much anticipated (HA) spring semester of school has started and as most of said semester will be spent doing work on this computer then it is only logical that this blog be updated more as a part of things I’m slightly energized by and as a way to distract myself from doing other work that is not real, but this other not real work will eventually earn me a teaching degree.

Speaking of MORE things that aren’t real.

One of my favorite stories from my time on the road is this:

So I’m in a swanky hotel with a few guys having just played a Radio and Records showcase with an Artist I used to tour with. For those of you following along at home, a R&R showcase is when a band performs in a rather large conference room for a maybe 50 or 100 people who all think they are much more important than they are. The band is usually desperate and the suits audience know it. So there is a full stage and lights and smoke and the whole shebang set up in this hotel conference room. The band is expected to go on stage, play three or four songs that all have radio potential, and play them with the same gusto as if they were playing Madison Square Garden. It’s humiliating. It’s degrading. It’s the music industry.

So the band is up there rockin, right? The audience consists of 1) radio program directors from across the country 2) record label stooges 3) interns, dear god the interns, as far as the eye can see. So. Fucking. Hipster. 4) mid-level positions of both radio tools and record company stooges. Those are the worst. A little higher than an intern, but with no power or authority, but always seem to need that blue tooth headset.

I forgot why I started talking about showcases..

Oh yea, things that aren’t real.

So we play the showcase, and we’re back at the hotel and we’re having some drinks and we’re going on a long tour the next day and we’re having a good ole’ time. One of the guys I’m with stares off, lost in thought. He sits like that for a bit and then says “this is not real.” “What’s not real?” we ask him.

“This whole thing. Sitting in a hotel, having drinks, being on tour, playing showcases for those people, all of it. It’s not real. The second you make all of this your reality, you’re ruined.”

Maybe the most true thing that I’ve ever heard. Gave me chills again just writing it. I wonder if it’s weight translates if you’re reading it right now, or if it was just one of those really important moments that life threw at me one time. Who knows. Either way.